Home / Browse / Travel & Exploration / The Head Hunters of Borneo:
BOCK, Carl.
The Head Hunters of Borneo:
A Narrative of Travel up The Mahakkam and down the Barito; also Journeyings in Sumatra.
Publisher: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1881
Stock code: 70924
Price: £950 Currency Conversion
First edition. "Dutch Borneo … was heavily trampled by government officials, explorers, romantics, and scientists … In 1878 Carl Bock … Norwegian naturalist and explorer, protected by an army of bodyguards and porters, combed Borneo for 'tailed men,' head-hunters and cannibals. His The Head-hunters of Borneo inspired compendious, sometimes lurid travel literature promoting Borneo's real or imagined decapitators" (Speake).
Large octavo. Original teal decorative cloth, title gilt to upper board and spine, brown surface-paper endpapers. Folding coloured map frontispiece and 30 chromolithographic plates, 7 wood engravings to text, one of them full-page. Externally somewhat rubbed, and a little worn at the extremities, some mottling to the edges of the upper board, light damp staining to the lower board, hinges cracked and repaired, contents slightly toned and a little shaken, remains a very good copy.
